


леди Макбет

by funkandwag



Category: Eastern Promises (2007)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 16:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funkandwag/pseuds/funkandwag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> He wasn’t the driver anymore, though, to be honest, he never had been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	леди Макбет

**Author's Note:**

> Vor: thief  
> Vrun: liar  
> леди Макбет: Lady Macbeth
> 
> Thanks to Zeen and Sadie for betaing.

       He wasn’t the driver anymore, though, to be honest, he never had been. There existed a sacred trust between a man and his driver and only the Lord and Scotland Yard knew how many times he’d violated that same trust. But Semyon would have violated it first, if he hadn’t; he’d thrown him to the Chechens quickly enough, that much was certain, he’d thrown him to the Chechens in the place of his unholy wreck of son, who was the only son of his he’d claim.

(Sometimes Kolya Vor clutched at Kirill, sometimes Kolya Vor held him close, but Nikolai Luzhin was still there beneath the stars and Nikolai Luzhin shuddered at his touch.)

He wasn’t the driver anymore, but he still drove Kirill from meeting to meeting, laying out business propositions on the way so that Kirill could take them for his own, which was the agreed way to go about things, vor or not. They became Kirill’s propositions and with Kirill’s propositions came the dull roar of cash with the needling whine of respect and police raids and trade lines broken by NATO following in its wake.

(“Fucking NATO,” Kirill said and so Luzhin grinned. The Americans had nothing to do with it; FSB and Scotland Yard had to do with it, he had to do with it and Kirill, poor Kirill, he didn’t know and no one dared suspect; and so Vor sighed. What could be left after the operation, besides FSB paperwork or climbing the ranks again with some other boss and no Kirill to grease the way.)

He wasn’t the driver anymore, though he forever had to stay a glass, a bottle behind Kirill, so at least one of them stayed sharp. Sharp to hear the mewling of the captains, sharp to see them bunching up in corners, sharp to play them off each other. Each man too suspicious and too afraid to wonder what this Siberian ox had to gain from their discord.

(Kirill’s ear, which was just enough.)

He wasn’t the driver anymore. Maybe it would have better if he'd actually been one, for a government official, maybe. Better if he had never left the shop with its motors and gears and the stinging smell of spilled oil and petrol fumes. There, the bad things that happened were a normal bad. He’d have died of a heart attack (not under the barber’s straight razor), worried about his son’s 2 in maths (not whether his son was a rapist), forgotten his wife’s birthday (not a slave with empty eyes). There, he’d fear tattooed men.

Here, they feared him. That was more than enough.

(Closer to vrun than vor, that was his purpose. Closer to vor than vrun, that was his fear. Caught somewhere in between, that was the truth.)

He wasn't the driver anymore. To remind him, the stars burned more each passing day. They were not red with infection, no, but they still held an aching, phantom burn that only vodka soothed.

(That girl had only wanted a better life, hadn’t wanted to be buried under the soil of Russia; she hadn’t been, but Mother Russia, that spiteful old bitch, had sunk her teeth in anyway, her sons sending her prodigal daughter to an early grave. She’d have him put in the ground, too, if she could help it. He’d been dead since he was fifteen and would welcome the rest.)


End file.
